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Well, I believe it has to do with specificity. "Goethe" is specific, whereas "occasion" is non-specific.

A. "...let another occasion such as this one..."

The word 'occasion' is made more specific by modifying it with 'such as this one'.

B. "...Geothe was a poet such as Shakespeare..."

The word 'poet' is made more specific by modifying it with 'such as Shakespeare'.

The problem here is the linking verb 'was'. It connects 'Goethe', a specfic person, with 'poet'. That is, 'poet' refers to 'Goethe', and 'such as' refers to 'poet' which refers back to 'Goethe'. In other words, 'such as' functions to make 'Goethe' more specific. That's the problem. 'Goethe' is not 'Shakespeare'. He is like Shakespeare.

"like" works well because it means, similar to: this is like this, whereas "such as" means, for example: this is this.

All the best,

Cas

P.S. Very interesting sentences! Thank you for the opportunity to play with them.

Thank you both once more.
Your explanation was very good indeed, Casiopea. I sort of felt something was wrong but couldn't figure out what.
As for my giving you the opportunity to play with those sentences, you really don't have to thank me. I am on the receiving end here. What's more, I'll probably come up with a lot more in the future. With me, producing these kinds of sentences is almost a mental illness!!

I agree with her (Caseopia's) analysis, but I do not agree with her conclusion. The first sentence needs the missing words to be supplied before it makes sense, then there is still not enough information. "A ship that was rapidly approaching picked up the signal" raises the question "Rapidly approaching what?"

I would not use the first sentence. The second sentence is perfectly good, and the clear implication is that the ship is rapidly approaching the speaker.

The situation is similar with the other two sentence pairs. The "rapidly approaching ship" is fine with me, but I don't care for "ship rapidly approaching".